Trouble at the Koolaid Point

Hypatian wrote:

[size=16]We Will Force Gaming To Be Free[/size]
On GamerGate & the Licence to Inflict Suffering
(Katherine Cross, First Person Scholar, 2014-10-08)

I think this is one of the more significant things that's been written about this whole mess.

Gremlin wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

[size=16]We Will Force Gaming To Be Free[/size]
On GamerGate & the Licence to Inflict Suffering
(Katherine Cross, First Person Scholar, 2014-10-08)

I think this is one of the more significant things that's been written about this whole mess.

Agreed, couldn't recommend it enough.

Katherine Cross wrote:

They are now all but criminalising the very notion that writers should be paid for their work, suggesting this is a conflict of interest in its own right. The new gaming website to emerge from the movement, goodgamers.us, is proud that it does not pay writers, using the ‘dream job’ and “do what you love” rhetoric beloved of the gaming industry at large; such ideas often help impose long hours and insufferable conditions on designers, writers, and developers. If it’s your dream job, why would you ever complain?

Writers shouldn't get paid at all now? Wow. I don't even know where to begin to counter a movement that has that as a tenet. I want to help make things better. I want to help people understand and distinguish the good points in their movement (and there are some good points) from the untenable. I don't know where to start when confronted with an idea like that, though.

Gremlin wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

[size=16]We Will Force Gaming To Be Free[/size]
On GamerGate & the Licence to Inflict Suffering
(Katherine Cross, First Person Scholar, 2014-10-08)

I think this is one of the more significant things that's been written about this whole mess.

That's more than a little amazing.

Ranger Rick wrote:

If you can stomach it, I just saw John Siracusa link to a post from the guy she's talking about:

@siracusa wrote:

If you're wondering about the "other side" of http://seriouspony.com/trouble-at-the-koolaid-point here he is, in his own words: http://www.donotlink.com/bvbu

I remember seeing this mentioned somewhere else and laughing my ass off. Hey, surprisingly, sometimes, someone who traffics in racist, anti-semitic, misogynist bullsh*t "FOR TEH LULZ" actually is a NO WAIT THAT'S HARASSMENT AND OPPRESSION HE HAS A POINT

We here at the Daily Stormer are opposed to violence. We seek revolution through the education of the masses. When the information is available to the people, systemic change will be inevitable and unavoidable.

This reminds me of no-one and nothing.

Just unbelievable. I always want to kick Nazis in the groin; these guys make me want to travel and do it.

Farscry wrote:

Speechless rage. Utterly speechless rage. [insert incoherent babbling obscenities]

Yup. The part where she was going over her harassment in 2007 felt like I was reading through an operations manual for all the crap that's been going on lately

She's also 100% accurate that someone is going to eventually die from one of these swatting incidents. And with this "Internet of Things" stuff starting to happen that's going to be a gold mine of opportunity for the trolls if companies don't put a ton of effort into securing them (to which I'd say the best security is to not connect them at all).

OG_slinger wrote:

Funny you should say that. I've been thinking about McCarthyism in relation to GG.

I was thinking about The Crucible myself. Tomahto, tomayto, right?

BadKen wrote:
Katherine Cross wrote:

They are now all but criminalising the very notion that writers should be paid for their work, suggesting this is a conflict of interest in its own right. The new gaming website to emerge from the movement, goodgamers.us, is proud that it does not pay writers, using the ‘dream job’ and “do what you love” rhetoric beloved of the gaming industry at large; such ideas often help impose long hours and insufferable conditions on designers, writers, and developers. If it’s your dream job, why would you ever complain?

Writers shouldn't get paid at all now? Wow. I don't even know where to begin to counter a movement that has that as a tenet. I want to help make things better. I want to help people understand and distinguish the good points in their movement (and there are some good points) from the untenable. I don't know where to start when confronted with an idea like that, though.

What's funny about broadcasting "they don't pay their writers" is that already happens in the industry (and slightly touched on by Kieron Gillen when he departed RPS). They're maintaining the status quo, not fixing a damn thing. Again, the tone-deafness / reality bubble / lack of self-awareness of #GG is why the movement was absurd in the first place.

Best of luck to them anyways, they'll get what they pay for in terms of quality and stability outside of a handful of true believers. No wonder their staff lists about 10-20 people already. You can't run a site like that on Google AdWords alone.

shoptroll wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

Funny you should say that. I've been thinking about McCarthyism in relation to GG.

I was thinking about The Crucible myself. Tomahto, tomayto, right?

Just as long as the movement eats itself, burns out, and then everyone realizes what horrible idiots they were.

But then I think about the conservatives who are reworking high school history courses to teach that McCarthy wasn't such a bad dude and then I weep for humanity.

Here's a thread on reddit where #gamergate people talk about Kathy Sierra's harasser, neo-nazi Weev, and his support for their movement.

http://www.donotlink.com/framed?559135

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Here's a thread on reddit where #gamergate people talk about Kathy Sierra's harasser, neo-nazi Weev, and his support for their movement.

http://www.donotlink.com/framed?559135

Something tells me it's a good thing I'm at work and can't view that page.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Here's a thread on reddit where #gamergate people talk about Kathy Sierra's harasser, neo-nazi Weev, and his support for their movement.

http://www.donotlink.com/framed?559135

404 not found

On one hand, you can't honestly blame a movement 100% for the people it attracts.

On the other hand, a movement really should take a look at the type of people it attracts and start asking itself some tough questions.

On one hand, you can't honestly blame a movement 100% for the people it attracts.

Celebrating the people you're attracting though...

Demosthenes wrote:
On one hand, you can't honestly blame a movement 100% for the people it attracts.

Celebrating the people you're attracting though...

Well, the Reddit thread suggests there wasn't a lot of actual celebrating, just a one-off account posting that and a lot of folks giving various states of "wtf no". I'm honestly not going to go to those boards and sift through the liquid feces to find out, so I'm going to stick with my (possibly vain) hope that these folks aren't so far gone that they're literally celebrating an actual neo-Nazi.

Looks like 8chan deleted the thread.

To be clear, there were a lot of people who wanted to distance themselves from weev as much as possible. The first few pages had a lot of support for him. Those people were later called shills, of course.

NeoGaf's thread about GG had an image capture of a 4chan? thread having the same "wtf" response.

Most of the celebrating I saw on Twitter last night was that it was the hacker dude who took down some uppity feminist (by doxxing, but they conveniently don't know that). I could chalk that up to a lack of understanding exactly who this dude was... but frankly, nope. If the "consumer revolt" is going to continue celebrating the involvement of homophobic, transphobic, racist, and now religious bigots... sorry, for all your claims about how no member represents the whole... it just doesn't hold up in my brain.

The movement continues to generate new "celebrities" of hatred, bigotry, and intolerance all while they continue to claim to be all inclusive but mostly seems to be sockpuppets and "useful idiots" who go into discussions of racial privilege and then talk about how poor white people and rich black people prove there's no white privilege.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Those people were later called shills, of course.

Life is so easy for them.

SixteenBlue wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Those people were later called shills, of course.

Life is so easy for them.

It was probably the exact same people, under different aliases.

Malor wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Those people were later called shills, of course.

Life is so easy for them.

It was probably the exact same people, under different aliases.

I don't think so, in this case. They're not planted on the other side, they're just people on the GG side who end up making them look bad. Everyone is a member of GG until they look dumb publicly and then they're just a shill, of course.

They're not planted on the other side, they're just people on the GG side who end up making them look bad. Everyone is a member of GG until they look dumb publicly and then they're just a shill, of course.

But we know, from IRC chats, that they cheerfully use aliases... say or do terrible things with one alias, and then decry themselves from another.

It would not shock me in the least if the exact same thing is happening here.

It's probably not a very large group, it's probably relatively few people with a lot of accounts.

Brianna Wu of Giant Spacekat games on twitter just a few minutes ago:

Spoilered for content. Threats of rape, violence.

Spoiler:
Brianna Wu @Spacekatgal wrote:

8chan/#gamergate just doxxed me, posting all kinds of personal information about me.

Guys, THIS is the war on industry women. Wake up.

Brianna Wu @Spacekatgal wrote:

And, here's the part of the night where I call the police.
(image of next RT, which she presumably took for documentation if the tweet is later deleted)

Death to Brianna @chatterwhiteman wrote:

@spacekatgal I've got a K-Bar and I'm coming to your house so I can shove it up your ugly feminist {sexist slur}.

Death to Brianna @chatterwhiteman wrote:

@spacekatgal If you have any kids, they're going to die too. I don't give a f*ck. They'll grow up to be feminists anyway.

Oh. And that charming person posted a lot more and started their rant by announcing to Wu that her address was XX Y____ Road, etc.

I thought the The Escapist might have made a mistake when I saw a dozen gg themed articles scroll past in my RSS feed, but I think I underestimated how far they screwed up. Storify here of some responses.

Wow @ TheEscapist. I feel dirty just reading that.

Gremlin wrote:

I thought the The Escapist might have made a mistake when I saw a dozen gg themed articles scroll past in my RSS feed, but I think I underestimated how far they screwed up. Storify here of some responses.

Too angry to post about this. And Tito (who I respected) is defending this article and using GG tag lines of "We don't support or condone harassment." What the ever-loving hell is going on i that place now.

And of course they got Brad Wardell to repeat his nonsense about having "won" the sexual harassment lawsuit against him, when he actually forced a settlement by filing a counter-suit. The apology letter he references does not retract the accusations, it only apologizes for filing the suit.

Then comes the bullsh*t about 75% of game devs supporting gamergate. I'm sure if you're trolling for developers in 8chan gg threads, you'll find a lot of support for gamer gate.

And man, don't get me started on Rogue Star. The guy is a de facto gamergate leader, so geeee let's ask him his opinion on gamergate! He's the guy who compiled the "honeypot" document of militant GG operations.

I don't get it. Why would The Escapist do this? Have they always been supportive of GG or is this something completely out of the blue?

Hypatian wrote:

Brianna Wu of Giant Spacekat games on twitter just a few minutes ago:

Spoilered for content. Threats of rape, violence.

Spoiler:
Brianna Wu @Spacekatgal wrote:

8chan/#gamergate just doxxed me, posting all kinds of personal information about me.

Guys, THIS is the war on industry women. Wake up.

Brianna Wu @Spacekatgal wrote:

And, here's the part of the night where I call the police.
(image of next RT, which she presumably took for documentation if the tweet is later deleted)

Death to Brianna @chatterwhiteman wrote:

@spacekatgal I've got a K-Bar and I'm coming to your house so I can shove it up your ugly feminist {sexist slur}.

Death to Brianna @chatterwhiteman wrote:

@spacekatgal If you have any kids, they're going to die too. I don't give a f*ck. They'll grow up to be feminists anyway.

Oh. And that charming person posted a lot more and started their rant by announcing to Wu that her address was XX Y____ Road, etc.

We need to speak out against this. Silence makes you complicit in the harassment. One reason these miscreants keep doing this is because they get away with it and they actually get support for it.

"We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." -Elie Wiesel

Like a month ago they threw over to gamergate. The EIC made a fawning post about their noble victory in getting The Escapist to change its policies.

The Escapist was under fire for reporting about Zoe Quinn harassment that was believed to come from a forum called wizchan. But she only believed that because an anonymous source told her so. The Escapist and Quinn were blamed for the people who went to wizchan and trolled/harassed them.

The same people who blamed Quinn and The Escapist are now gamergators who deny any responsibility for the harassment their movement has spawned. They lack the self-awareness to realize the irony.

bekkilyn wrote:

I don't get it. Why would The Escapist do this? Have they always been supportive of GG or is this something completely out of the blue?

They already capitulated to #GG's demands regarding "ethics" and have become sort of the default forum for them since 4chan and Reddit started deleting their posts. Why would they go this far as to give a voice to known harassers, rape apologists, and more? At this point, who knows. Tito, however, seems to think giving them a voice in a piece like this is not support or giving them a platform.

Nice to know other journalistic outlets learned nothing from BBC's open letter on why Climate Change deniers were not getting effective screentime opposite climate change scientists.